Klisé

Klisé is a minimalist, open-source Jekyll theme for running a personal site or blog, with built-in light and dark mode, SEO optimization, and one-click deployment to Netlify, Vercel, or Azure.

What is Klisé?

Klisé is a Jekyll theme created by piharpi that transforms Markdown posts and pages into a responsive static website. It requires a Ruby environment with Jekyll installed, and outputs plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that can be hosted on any static server. The theme is distributed under the MIT License, so you can freely modify and reuse it.

Key Features

• Light & Dark Mode — Toggleable color schemes that are customizable through SCSS variables, with a moon icon for the dark theme.
• Customizable styling — All styling is written in .scss, allowing you to override colors, fonts, and layout rules.
• Responsive & mobile-first — Layouts adapt to desktop, tablet, and mobile screens, designed mobile-first.
• SEO optimized — Includes meta tags and social sharing data to help search engines index your content.
• Organized post images — Uses the jekyll-postfiles plugin so each post's images live in the same folder as the Markdown file.
• Sitemap & RSS — Generates sitemap.xml via jekyll-sitemap and an Atom feed via jekyll-feed.
• Syntax highlighting — Uses Rouge to highlight code blocks in many languages.
• Post navigation — Automatically shows next and previous post links at the bottom of each article.
• Comment layout — Add a comment section by enabling it in the front matter of a post.
• Google Analytics — Drop in your tracking ID and analytics are collected.
• HTML minification — Uses jekyll-compress-html to shrink HTML output.
• Validated & performance-tested — The theme passes W3C validation and Lighthouse/PageSpeed tests.

Who is it for?

• Personal bloggers — Publish essays, tutorials, or daily notes with a clean, distraction-free reading experience.
• Developers — Use it as a starter for a personal portfolio or project documentation because it integrates with Jekyll's static site generation and version control.
• Design-conscious writers — Get a minimalist aesthetic with a working dark mode and no heavy JavaScript frameworks.

What can you do with Klisé?

• Create a personal homepage — Set up a landing page with links to your latest posts and social profiles.
• Run a blog — Write posts in Markdown, add front matter, and get automatic RSS, sitemap, and SEO.
• Deploy to static hosting — Use the one-click deploy buttons for Netlify, Vercel, or Azure Static Web Apps.
• Customize the design — Edit the SCSS files to match your brand, and enable comments per post via front matter.

How does Klisé work?

Klisé is installed by cloning the GitHub repository and running bundle install followed by bundle exec jekyll serve. The theme then processes Markdown content and SCSS into static HTML, available at localhost:4000 during development. For production, the same build command generates the final site for deployment.

Pros and cons

• Pros: Free and open source; includes SEO, sitemap, RSS, and dark mode out of the box; supports one-click deployment to Netlify, Vercel, and Azure.
• Cons: The jekyll-postfiles plugin is not supported by GitHub Pages, which can break post image paths if you host there; schema.org metadata and PhotoSwipe integration are listed as backlogs.

Pricing

Klisé is free and open source under the MIT License. There are no paid tiers; you can fork, modify, and deploy it without cost. Optional support is available through Ko-fi and Saweria.

FAQ

Is Klisé free?

Yes, Klisé is open source under the MIT License. You can use it for personal or commercial projects without paying, and donations are optional via Ko-fi or Saweria.

Does Klisé support dark mode?

Yes, it includes a light/dark mode toggle that can be customized through SCSS variables.

Can I use Klisé on GitHub Pages?

Yes, but note that the jekyll-postfiles plugin is not compatible with GitHub Pages, which may cause broken image paths. The recommended workaround is to deploy on Netlify, Vercel, Azure, or Surge.sh instead.

How do I enable comments on a post?

You can enable the comment layout by setting a flag in the front matter of an individual post. The theme provides a comment layout but does not include a specific comment system, so you need to integrate one yourself.

What Jekyll plugins does Klisé use?

Klisé uses jekyll-postfiles, jekyll-sitemap, jekyll-feed, and jekyll-compress-html, along with the Rouge syntax highlighter.